Quotes by Japanese Authors

You can always die. It's living that takes real courage." - Himura Kenshin
Nobuhiro Watsuki
In truly deep darkness, all kinds of strange things were possible.
Haruki Murakami
Necessity is an independent concept. It has a different structure from logic, morals, or meaning. Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn't play a role shouldn't exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That's what you call dramaturgy.
Haruki Murakami
We're going to explore the outside world someday, right? Far beyond these walls, there's flaming water, land made of ice, and fields of sand spread wide. It's the world my parents wanted to go to.
Hajime Isayama
Such a little childTo send to be a priestling...Icy poverty
Shiki
There was just one moon. That familiar, yellow, solitary moon. The same moon that silently floated over fields of pampas grass, the moon that rose--a gleaming, round saucer--over the calm surface of lakes, that tranquilly beamed down on the rooftops of fast-asleep houses. The same moon that brought the high tide to shore, that softly shone on the fur of animals and enveloped and protected travelers at night. The moon that, as a crescent, shaved slivers from the soul--or, as a new moon, silently bathed the earth in its own loneliness. THAT moon.
Haruki Murakami
Personally, I like to sleep. And I intend to appropriately confine myself more and more to my living quarters and pass my life away sleeping.
Tsunetomo Yamamoto
Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy.
Kazuo Ishiguro
It was a small room with dim light coming in the window, reminiscent of old Polish films.
Haruki Murakami
To put it in a rather vulgar way, I had been dreaming about love in the firm belief that I could not be loved, but at the final stage I had substituted desire for love and felt a sort of relief. But in the end I had understood that desire itself demanded for its fulfillment that I should forget about the conditions of my existence, and that I should abandon what for me constituted the only barrier to love, namely the belief that I could not be loved. I had always thought of desire as being something clearer than it really is, and I had not realized that it required people to see themselves in a slightly dreamlike, unreal way.
Yukio Mishima
Deep down, people who deliberately distribute other people’s music and stuff feel contempt for professionals. And it’s not just culture — these days lots of people are contemptuous of everything. Without realizing it, they’re searching for things to despise.
Fuminori Nakamura
I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials.
Haruki Murakami
Personally I am very pessimistic. But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can't help but bless them for a good future. Because I can't tell that child, 'Oh, you shouldn't have come into this life.' And yet I know the world is heading in a bad direction. So with those conflicting thoughts in mind, I think about what kind of films I should be making.
Hayao Miyazaki
Slowly like a movie fade out, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world.
Haruki Murakami
Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?
D.T. Suzuki
The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don't.
Marie Kondō
When one has attained a state of mind from which the evil passions of the present world have been so utterly winnowed, fear too is forgotten. Thus it was that the priest no longer could understand why Hell should exist.
Yukio Mishima
For the first time in my life I realized what a horrible, miserable, salvationless hell it is to be without money.
Osamu Dazai
You’ll never change the world just by complaining.
Tadahiko Nagao
To Tengo, sexual desire was fundamentally an extension of a means of communication. And so, to look for sexual desire in a place where there was no possibility of communication seemed inappropriate to him.
Haruki Murakami
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
Bashō Matsuo
But why is it that if you imagine a baby who smells of milk, for example, you can't help smiling? Why is there such an agreement around the world about what is or isn't a foul smell? Who decided what smells bad? Is it impossible that somewhere in this world there are people who, if they sat next to a homeless fellow they'd get the urge to snuggle up to him, but if they sat next to a baby they'd get an urge to kill it?
Ryū Murakami
Nestled next to me, she nodded. “I’m fine. As long as I take the medicine. So don’t worry.” She leaned her head back against my shoulder. “But don’t ask me anything, okay? Why that happened.”“Understood. No questions,” I said.“Thank you very much for today,” she said.“What part of today?”“For taking me to the river. For giving me water from your mouth. For putting up with me.”I looked at her. Her lips were right in front of me. The lips I had kissed as I gave her water. And once more those lips seemed to be seeking me. Slightly parted, with her beautiful white teeth barely visible. I could still feel her soft tongue, which I’d touched slightly as I gave her water. I found it hard to breathe, and I couldn’t think. My body burned. She wants me, I thought. And I want her.
Haruki Murakami
Don't blame me. That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution.
Haruki Murakami
Before I can say anything, It dissolves in my throat And turns into tears.
Mika Yamamori
By then she was dead. In fact, she may have been dead a while ago. Physically, several seconds ago, mentally, ages ago.
Koushun Takami
They're butterflies because...well, he thought it was cool. They eat humans.
Katsura Hoshino
Never let your failures go to your heart or your successes go to your head.
Sōichirō Honda
Partings are the beginnings of new meetings.Beginnings happen because there are endings.
Natsuki Takaya
You don't know what cold is until you've experienced the cold you feel when the blood is draining out of your body.
Ryū Murakami
I still don't know what it really means to grow up. However, if I happen to meet you, one day in the future, by then, I want to become someone you can be proud to know.
Makoto Shinkai
As long as I can be with you, even my digital heart will start to throb. Like a quantum wind, my heart will start to sway.
Rin and Len Kagamine
I mean, the ones on trial are not like me in any way: they're a different kind of human being. They live in a different world, they think different thoughts, and their actions are nothing like mine. Between the world they live in and the world I live in there's this thick, high wall. At least, that's how I saw it at first. ...I became a lot less sure of myself. In other words, I started seeing it like this: that there really was no such thing as a wall separating their world from mine. Or if there was such a wall, it was probably a flimsy one made of papier-mache. The second I leaned on it, I'd probably fall right through and end up on the other side. Or maybe it's that the other side has already managed to sneak its way inside of us, and we just haven't noticed.
Haruki Murakami
I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world.
Haruki Murakami
I'm not the protagonist of a novel or anything...I'm just a normal college student who likes to read...But...If I were to write a book with me as the main character...It would be......A tragedy.
Sui Ishida
I'm... I'm so in love with you that I can't even stand it! Sasuke! Stay with me, and I'll never let you regret it! We'll have fun every day, and... And you'll be happy! I'll make sure of it! I'll do anything for you, Sasuke! Just, please... Please, please don't go! I'll even help you take revenge! I mean, I'll manage it somehow, so... So please... Stay with me.
Masashi Kishimoto
When my brother,…, was a young boy learning the Chinese classics, I was in the habit of listening with him and I became unusually proficient at understanding those passages that he found too difficult to grasp and memorize. Father a most learned man, was always regretting the fact: ’Just my luck!’ he would say. ’What a pity she was not born a man!’ But then I gradually realized that people were saying ’It’s bad enough when a man flaunts his Chinese learning; she will come to no good,’ and since I have avoided writing the simplest character.
Murasaki Shikibu
The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless.
Hayao Miyazaki
Once upon a time, you dragged a part of me into the world of the dead, and now Naoko has dragged another pat of me into that world.
Haruki Murakami
It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.
Haruki Murakami
The man at the end of the bar was looking at me. ... Should I get drunk and sleep with him now? But I could see that I would regret that so much I would want to die after. I didn't want to get involved with anyone, and I didn't want to bear being alone with the warmth left by someone long gone.
Fuminori Nakamura
The world is always full of the sound of waves.The little fishes, abandoning themselves to the waves, dance and sing, and play, but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it depth?
Eiji Yoshikawa
I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence. Believe me, everything that we call chance today won’t make sense anymore. To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance.
Michio Kaku
Don't be so quick to throw away your life. No matter how disgraceful or embarrassing it may be, you need to keep struggling to find your way out until the very end.
Norihiro Yagi
Every person should decide for himself how happy, or unhappy, our society might be.
Haruki Murakami
Thus in a single phrase I can define the great illusion concerning 'love' in this world. It is the effort to join reality with the apparition.
Yukio Mishima
I’m free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. All I know is I’m totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free?
Haruki Murakami
It's odd, isn't it? People die everyday and the world goes on like nothing happened.
Kyoko Kirigiri
the mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed--your self. You must believe in your own powers.
Haruki Murakami
We have learnt a lesson: words written in books, all of them, are lies. There are no exceptions. Words written on papers are all deceitful.If we put it in a more proper manner, counting non-fiction works, then things like documents, reports, and reviews that are recorded are also deceitful.There’s nothing but deceit.Don’t believe in the for-sale literature.
NisiOisiN
You'll be okay. No matter what shape reality takes, you can handle it.
Shiro Amano
It was as if he had two faces, one of utmost calm, one of furious action; and he wore both with ease. He was like the animal whose face he wore, able to sit in silence for hours, without moving a muscle, then flying like a raging storm into battle, returning again to perfect calm when the fight was over.
Kaoru Kurimoto
In a world without fear of death... people will never attain the hope that is to be found from casting their fears aside and persevering through them. While it is true that people can continue to press forward through the simple act of living... That is in no way comparable to marching forward in the face of death while doing their damnedest to keep it at bay. That is why... that is why people have given that very march a unique and special name. Courage.
Tite Kubo
Wherever I wander off to, when I draw, when I paint, I get my life back. I am lucky that I am an Artist.
Hiroko Sakai
There are apparently two hypotheses about jealousy: that it is a product of civilization and that it is a basic instinct of animals.
Kōbō Abe
But if a person hasn't ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is. I'm grateful for it.
Banana Yoshimoto
You can hide memories, suppress them, but you can’t erase the history that produced them
Haruki Murakami
Once you pass a certain age, life becomes noting more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or, then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just disappear all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never get them back. Your search for replacement never goes well. It’s all very painful- as painful as actually being cut with a knife.
Haruki Murakami
All the same, writing honestly is very difficult. The more I try to be honest, the farther my words sink into darkness.
Haruki Murakami
A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born but you can choose how you die.
Haruki Murakami